Havana, Cuba, Feb 27, 2008 / 04:06 pm (CNA).- The Christian Life Movement, led by Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, has announced the publication of the first edition of “Liberacion,” an independent Christian magazine that will now be the official voice of the movement.

The first edition, published electronically, explains that the new magazine takes up the mantle left by a previous Catholic publication, “Pueblo de Dios,” which “was created 20 years ago at the Parish of the Hill, as an initiative of a group of lay Christians who wanted to proclaim liberty and the rights of all Cubans and of all human beings, who ‘have the right to have rights because they are children of God’.”

“Pueblo de Dios” was the “first free publication to proclaim the great and good news of the liberation of Cubans, amidst the oppression that our people suffer.”

“That humble but radical publication,” the new magazine Liberation noted, “was the voice of the Christian Club of Cuban Thought, a group that met to think and debate and was predecessor to the Christian Liberation Movement.”

“Pueblo de Dios” ceased publication and the Christian Club was disbanded, but some of its members founded the Christian Liberation Movement in September of 1988.

“Today,” the magazine stated, “the periodical ‘Liberation’ is born, on the 155th anniversary of the passing to eternal life of Father Felix Varela,” the precursor of Cuban independence whose cause for beatification is open.

Liberation exists “for the people and as the people’s voice, to serve with the Truth, inviting all to seek it with a sincere heart. Rather than define it, we want to embrace the Truth and encourage everyone to do so,” the magazine’s editors said.

The magazine also exists “to proclaim and defend the rights of the person…to defend the marginalized and the poor of our nation, those who nobody mentions, those who suffer illness and injustice…by proposing reflection and criticism, practicing prophetic denunciation, calling all to dialogue in order to achieve justice in our homeland, promoting freedom of conscience and exhorting the exercise of freedom…in any circumstance and beyond any human strength.”

“We commend our mission to Jesus Christ, the Lord of History,” concludes the presentation of the movement’s new publication.